Mother Jones Tackles The Luxury of Choice

There’s a great online piece over at Mother Jones about Sarah Palin’s pro-life “choices” titled “The Luxury of True Reproductive Choice.” The article gives a little much needed perspective on how Palin’s pro-life stance is an easy one for her to take given her socio-economic status and the insured health care choices that accompany that. It also spells out what a victory for the Republicans will likely mean for reproductive policy in the US. Here’s an excerpt:

…Paradoxically, kindness toward mothers and children in need–in the form of food, shelter, and education–is not a value the party (Palin) belongs to, including that energized base, upholds. Just this year, Palin used her gubernatorial power to reduce funding to Convenant House Alaska’s Passage House, a program that “assists young mothers in developing skills such as healthy parenting, money management, priority setting, housing acquisition and social skills development.” John McCain’s health care plan, which promises only to lower the costs of medical care and offer families health savings accounts, would do little to lessen the financial burden of expectant mothers or parents with disabled children. Consequently, it will do little to reduce the number of abortions. As the Guttmacher Foundation has found, in more than 32 studies conducted in 27 countries, the second most common reason women give for terminating a pregnancy is socioeconomic, including “lack of support from the father, poverty and unemployment.”
If Sarah Palin’s pro-life agenda doesn’t factor that in–and doesn’t fight to give families equal access to health care and education regardless of their economic status–it’s not only inhumane but ineffective.